Aperture, Again
by SliverOfHope
Summary: "Being released from Aperture was a surprise. An unexpected surprise." Surprises, however, don't last long, and even Chell is in for a new one that completely twists everything she thought she knew. Cue GLaDOS ruining everything. Again.


**A/n: **If you've known me for a while, then you know that I absolutely abhor writing multi chaptered fanfiction and that they rarely, if ever, get finished, so this right here may come as a shock to you.

But look, chapter one! And PORTAL 2, nonetheless. c:

Based on a prompt I received from Zabchan on tumblr:  
_"Wheatley discovers an object form his pre-game past (preferable a photograph). Chell helps him sort through the resulting feelings."_

I promise that prompt will be incorporated into this eventually. :3

**Rated:** T  
**Disclaimer:**I don't own anything Portal related. Title of this chapter is taken from Foxy Shazam's song 'Holy Touch'. I don't own that either. ;)

Enjoy?

* * *

**Chapter 1: Heal Me With Your Holy Touch**

Being released from Aperture was a surprise. An unexpected surprise. One that left Chell in tears as she sat on the slightly charred Companion Cube just staring up into the clouds and breathing fresh air. For that sacred day or so, she rested, long fall boots detached and portal gun on the ground. It was peaceful and tranquil. The only sounds were her own even breathing and what seemed like a flock of birds chattering somewhere in the distance. The wheat swayed in a sweet breeze and tickled Chell's exposed calves. She let out a laugh, an action she hadn't done in eons it seemed, and once she started, it was impossible to stop. The gasping and endorphin rush caused by her seizing abs and cheek muscles was bliss, and she had the happy tears to prove it.

Though something nagged at the back of her mind - a little niggle that this situation was amiss. Like a fool, she pushed the thought aside, instead leaning back on the cube and watching the skies. Soon enough, day started to give way to night and Chell's eyelids began to droop. Without the adrenal vapor her body was so used to, her mind was free to force the rest of her into a deep snooze that she so desperately needed. Ignoring her grumbling stomach, the woman fell asleep without struggle.

* * *

Across the stars and somewhere near the Earth's gravitational pull, a satellite floated lazily around its orbit. Its lights were off and it didn't let out a signal. It seemed nonfunctional except for a faintly glowing symbol that Chell would have run away from had she seen it. In some dark corner of the satellite, a mechanical arm held onto a metallic sphere that thrashed against its confines.

"Oi! Let me go! I don't want to go back!"

The cry fell on deaf ears as the satellite drifted closer and closer to Earth, gaining speed and momentum as the temperature rose. Entering the atmosphere silenced the sphere as its optic widened, presumable in fear, as it recognized its landing destination.

"Oh no, not here. Anything but here," it moaned, blue optic shutting in defeat.

The small satellite slowed by itself, some high-tech mechanism the sphere couldn't understand working hard so as not to crash the expensive space gear. Approaching a white-roofed, white-painted building, it paused, allowing the roofing to split and a whole slew of mechanical arms to grab it and pull it downward into the building. The sphere struggled once more, but it knew it was moot. It recognized the way it was being lead, and knew that it'd probably be incinerated. For a moment, it believed that a death via burning in the garbage piles was eminent until the mechanical arms pried it away from the satellite. The arms' rail separated from the ones that held the space gear and went in the complete opposite direction the sphere planned.

"Hey, where are we going? Don't tell me we're heading to where I think we are." A sudden realization struck as the railway arms sped up, zooming through test chambers and walkways, all the way to the one room the sphere had never ever wanted to see again.

"Hello, moron. What a pleasure it is to see you again," drawled a feminine voice. Before the sphere could protest and shout that it wasn't a moron, the great ceiling bound AI bent down, locking her gold eye on the sphere held in mechanical clutches. "You didn't think that being banished to space for a day would be the only consequence you endure for almost destroying my facility, did you?" She chuckled, a hollow and emotionless sound. "No. What I had in mind was much, much more painful."

With that, the mechanical arm dropped the sphere on the floor, cracking its optic down the middle and jarring its mechanisms painfully. Three or so tall robots descended on the sphere, ignore its shouted pleas for mercy as they pulled it apart piece-by-piece, ripping away hardware and metal.

"Put the moron in Body Prototype III," directed GLaDOS, overseeing the painful procedure. "And don't break his hard drive. I want him in perfect mental condition for all of this."

The robots continued their work, placing the pulsating blue hard drive within the new body.

"Get someone to fetch our missing test subject," GLaDOS commanded, swiveling around to face a screen. A team of black robots saluted at her command and left through an elevator. The screen went blank, and the AI announced, "Oh, this is going to be good…"

* * *

Chell awoke, her neck hair standing on end. Acting on instinct, the woman strapped her long fall boots on in record time and swung the portal gun into her hands like a baseball bat. She flipped around only to have a squad of agile floating robots surround and electrocute her into unconsciousness. For a second, she thought she heard the Companion Cube cry out, but as darkness overtook her mind, she attested it to the shock of being kidnapped back into the place she just celebrated finally being let out of.

Chell was being pulled back into Aperture. Again.


End file.
